For Queen & someone else’s country

Every Republican under the sun, it seems, wants the Queen to apologise for the whole enchilada from Strongbow’s invasion of Ireland and the manky spud famine to Bloody Sunday (Part I & Part II). But won’t Elizabeth Windsor suffer enough faced with a barrage of Irish c’lebs from Amanda Brunker to Lorraine Keane − whose contribution to Irish culture has been to tell motorists to avoid the Kimmage crossroads during rush hour − to the bats-in-the-belfry yodels of Mary Byrne and the self piteous whines of a NAMA property developer? I’m assuming that Jedward will also be present, kickboxing at the cameras, demanding acreage of attention.

One group definitely not invited to the Royal hooley are those knockabout funsters in the Real IRA. They recently described the Queen’s 3-day junket as ‘the final insult’. Yet privately they’re probably salivating over the prospect of international broadcast attention from CNN, Sky News, NBC, and the BBC as they attempt to disrupt a blue-rinse pensioner lobbing some dried flowers on some very dead people in gardens normally occupied by Whacker, Thrasher, Basher and Redser, with their Nike logbags full of hypodermic needles and Druids cider.

To be serious for a moment though: after the national revulsion over Constable Ronan Kerr’s murder the dissies have now been gifted a chance of a propaganda-comeback. If they can turn parts of Dublin upside down as they did with the Love Ulster rally in 2006 they will score a publicity coup. The sight of globally renowned correspondents reporting live on the violence in Parnell St. will put the dissidents inflexibly back on the map. RSF has already announced their main demo starts at the Black Church behind Parnell Square (one time home to other dummies of a wax variety) where no doubt the track suit catwalk will charge like wildebeest towards a line of red-faced culchie Gardaí who’d give their left scrotum to be off-duty milling about with a Hurley stick somewhere bovine-deep in the midlands.

Security operations so far have involved a lot of Garda knocking on a lot of doors and ‘taking people’s names’ like they used to do back in the day of Garda Patrol (precursor to Crimecall) when a random Mrs Murphy’s garden gate was stolen. A pal who lives on Clonliffe Road backing onto Croke Park, which is part of Lizzy’s barnstorm, described how a country Guard knocked at her door and asked for her name and address. The name bit she could partially understand, but the address bit was a puzzle as he’d just knocked on her door after all! Bins have been confiscated, phone boxes soldered shut, student accommodation evacuated, sewers searched (perhaps even members of the voluntary Garda Reserve are manning the city drains and sewers?) All around Parnell Square the polished-bróga Special Branch have been not very discreetly placing sniper folk on sagging Edwardian rooftops in what I assume is an attempt to outwit other snipers belonging to more bothersome organisations who are way better at the gun thing and with more reason to use them. My bet is that an unemployed INLA man, unable to get onto a FÁS scheme due to the upsurge in quantity surveyors and solicitors hogging places, will send some bullets flying into the air, causing untold hysteria and horror, perhaps even a right royal stampede with Lizzy roaring, “Help! Help! My hat!” and De Duke saying: “Oh shit I say, here we go again old girl”.

The Twitter has been groaning with protestations all week: ‘What’s this about school children being drafted in to wave flags for queen’s visit? A reprehensible misuse of children,’ says Greystones branch of Sinn Féin. ‘Would ya really go on holiday to a place where the majority of the population want to see your head on a pike?’ asks another.

The tour is too long and is tempting fate. Already there are hoax bombs (London: yesterday, Maynooth and Inchicore Luas, this morning) and various ‘designed to disrupt’ shenanigans. There are too many venues and the opportunities are large for something to go badly wrong. Contrast with Obama who has just two venues to speak at before heading back into the burly blue sky. It would’ve been better if the Queen had tea & a few slices of McCambridges bread with Mary McAleese at Aras, followed by symbolic tree planting in the park, a pint of black stuff at Guinness Brewery and down to some stud farm in Kildare (where they’re all West Brits anyway) before heading back to Blighty. To put further blue fuel on verdigris flames, the geniuses in the Phoenix Park Gaff have invited UDA supremo Jackie McDonald and his loyalist entourage to Golden Bridge for the war dead ceremony. It’s a Tiramisu of farce, every day new and more flavoursome layers added.

Ireland, in the shitpit of fiscal smelliness, is forking out a fragrant €30 million to protect the Queen’s head and the Duke of Edinburgh’s torso (Philip’s uncle was blown up here). Costs could rise excessively if riots do erupt and British holiday-makers are scared off by the Queen’s getaway to the Emerald Isle ending in calamity. Fianna Fáil gambled and lost the banking industry through their disastrous 2008 bailout. Now, Fine Gael and Labour are gambling on one of the few businesses left in our economically ravaged country: tourism. Remember too that this prodigious PR stunt was planned as the final chapter in a long drawn-out peace process. However, if things go awry it could be the preface to an upsurge in Republican conflict all over again.

This is the biggest test of authority for the state since the 1981 hunger strike riots outside the British Embassy. The entire thing will be a sphincter-squeezing moment even if 10,000 strapping Guards, army and all 17 members of Special Branch manage to block the view of rampaging animals at the barricades. It will be like one of those icy moments out of sight in a Titanic lifeboat, where even from a polite distance there’s scant hope of drowning out the howls. The only good thing that could possibly happen if disaster strikes is Tonight with Vincent Brownewould be forced to change topic, if only for a week.

This post originally appeared on the Anti Room blog in May 2011 – to read the comments click here

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About junecaldwell

June's short story collection Room Little Darker is published by New Island Books in May 2017. She's a prizewinner of The Moth International Short Story Prize and has been shortlisted and highly commended for many others including: Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, Colm Toíbín International Short Story Award, Sunday Business Post/Penguin short story prize, Lorian Hemingway (USA), RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland and Over The Edge New Writer of the Year. In 2010 she received an Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) bursary for fiction. Her work has been showcased at the Italo-Irish Literature Exchange in Nogarole Rocca / Verona (May 2012), Read For The World (June 2012) and Bloomnibus (June 2013) at the Irish Writers' Centre, Galway Pro Choice (Aug 2013), Over the Edge Galway (Dec 2013), Stinging Fly Spring Launch (March 2014), At The Edge, Cavan (May 2014), The Winding Stair Prizewinner's Reading (Sep 2014), One City One Book: DLR Lexicon Barrytown Trilogy reading (April 2015), Hodges Figgis Book Festival (Oct 2015), Bogman's Canon Fiction Disco (Nov 2015, April 2016), Doolin Writers' Weekend (March 2016), Five Lamps Arts Festival (Mar 2016), National Concert Hall: Kevin Barry Recital Room series (April 2016) and the Eastrogen Rising: A Rebel Cabaret. Her creative writing has been published in Woven Tale Press, The Moth, The Stinging Fly, Literary Orphans and Popshot, as well as a non-fiction biography of a Trouble's moll with Gill and MacMillan in 2006. Her short story 'SOMAT' is published in The Long Gaze Back: The Anthology of Irish Women Writers, edited by Sinéad Gleeson/New Island. Journalism: The Gloss, The Guardian, The Observer, Sunday Times, Sunday Life, Sunday Tribune, Sunday Business Post, Sunday Independent, Ireland on Sunday, Irish Independent, as well as a number of women's magazines and trade journals.